Poet Ponders the Digital

An Apple II advertisement from the December 1977 issue of Byte magazine, pages 16 and 17. The second page was described the features of the Apple II. The ad originally ran in May 1977 and was updated that December. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley January 5, 2015 Deadline February 2015 Issue BYTE magazine stopped appearing on newsstands in July 1998. The name lived on for a time as an online publication, without many of its best columnists and without its definitive test lab reports. Finally, in 2009, the real BYTE ceased to exist. Other online publishers revived the name, but it was never the same as the legendary print publication. In November 2014, my favorite online technical resource for Apple power users and developers, OS X Hints, went into archive mode. A month later, on December 16, 2014, Dr. Dobb’s Journal followed BYTE into the virtual sunset after 38 years of publication. In fact, they call it “sunsetting” the publication: Dr. Dobb’s wil...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley March 4, 2013 Deadline April 2013 Issue Getting Social to Build Your Business Facebook, Twitter , Foursquare, Yelp and more. If you want to grow your business today, you need to know the power of social networking. You also need to be prepared to change your social media strategy quickly to keep up with trends. Social networks come and go, as quickly as the “likes” and “trending” data they report. In the late 1990s, I recommended basic Web pages and e-mail addresses to my clients. Today, deciding which types of online presences are best for a business or organization presents a challenge. Whether you focus on business-to-business (B2B) services or retail sales helps determine the best online strategy for your company. The more public exposure your company seeks, the more important a social media presence will be. The basic Web presence still serves a purpose, and inexpensive hosting services cost the same as a stack of good business cards. Bu...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 6, 2012 Deadline September 2012 Issue The Responsive Web: Every Screen is Different Websites should be viewable and usable on as many devices and computer screen sizes as possible. That sounds obvious and simple, but designers know that it is increasingly difficult to anticipate how people might visit a website. If you have a website for your business or organization, you should test it on a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop and a variety of computers with a mix of screen sizes. Testing a website on one computer with three or four browsers is insufficient, though that remains an important aspect of testing a website. No longer do we sit at 800-by-600 or 1024-by-768 screens to explore the Web. As a designer, this is frustrating. As a smartphone owner, I’m thrilled I don’t need a computer to read news headlines or read book reviews. I’ve always tried to design websites that work well for most users. Before 2006, I designed websites for myse...